Constantine and the Cities

Imperial Authority and Civic Politics

By Noel Lenski

Publication Year: 2016

Over the course of the fourth century, Christianity rose from a religion actively persecuted by the authority of the Roman empire to become the religion of state—a feat largely credited to Constantine the Great. Constantine succeeded in propelling this minority religion to imperial status using the traditional tools of governance, yet his proclamation of his new religious orientation was by no means unambiguous. His coins and inscriptions, public monuments, and pronouncements sent unmistakable signals to his non-Christian subjects that he was willing not only to accept their beliefs about the nature of the divine but also to incorporate traditional forms of religious expression into his own self-presentation. In Constantine and the Cities, Noel Lenski attempts to reconcile these apparent contradictions by examining the dialogic nature of Constantine's power and how his rule was built in the space between his ambitions for the empire and his subjects' efforts to further their own understandings of religious truth.

Focusing on cities and the texts and images produced by their citizens for and about the emperor, Constantine and the Cities uncovers the interplay of signals between ruler and subject, mapping out the terrain within which Constantine nudged his subjects in the direction of conversion. Reading inscriptions, coins, legal texts, letters, orations, and histories, Lenski demonstrates how Constantine and his subjects used the instruments of government in a struggle for authority over the religion of the empire.

Cover

Title page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

List of Maps

Introduction. Many Faces of Constantine

Within two years of Constantine’s death in 337, Eusebius of Caesarea put the finishing
touches on his Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine, the single best
source we have for understanding this pivotal ruler.1 Eusebius was perhaps...

Part I. Constantine’s Self-Presentation

Chapter 1. Constantine Develops

We are fortunate to possess as many of Constantine’s writings as we do. While all
are highly mannered and each crafted to the exigencies of individual audiences,
they offer at least some understanding of how the emperor constructed his own...

Chapter 2. Constantinian Constants

In the previous chapter, we examined Constantine as a figure in a continuous state
of self-refashioning. He made and remade his image to suit changing circumstances,
to adapt to chance occurrences, and to respond to political and military...

Chapter 3. Constantine and the Christians: Controlling the Message

An emperor modulated his message not only to suit the advance of time and shifts
in circumstance, but also with an eye to his audience. Many of the changes we witnessed
in Constantine’s self-presentation in Chapter 1 were traced using that group...

Part II. the Power of Petitions

Chapter 4. Approaching Constantine: The Orcistus Dossier

It has long been agreed that Roman government tended to implement policy in
response to problems and petitions rather than working in preplanned and proactive
ways. With his foundational work on the Roman emperor...

Chapter 5. The Exigencies of Dialogue: Hispellum

In contrast with Phrygia, where a patchwork of exclusive religious communities—some Christian, others pagan—coexisted alongside, but also in tension with one
another, central Italy in the early fourth century was much more religiously...

Chapter 6. Constantine’s Cities in the West: Nomen Venerandum

In the fourth chapter we saw that a politics of civic favoritism was operative under
Constantine. He split tiny Orcistus from its much larger neighbor Nacoleia and
endowed it with civic status in no small part because of its adherence...

Chapter 7. Constantine’s Cities in the East: Peer Polity Interaction

Civic politics in the East operated according to slightly different norms than in
the West. To be sure, rivalries between neighboring polities arose in both places,
and these were often mediated through the emperor. But in contrast with most...

Part III. Reconstructing the Ancient City

Chapter 8. Redistributing Wealth

The ancient city was a complicated financial undertaking. Cities were at once
property owners and revenue-producing entities. In the former capacity they
owned both real and movable wealth, including considerable amounts of...

Chapter 9. Building Churches

Ancient cities took great pride in their temples, not just as cultic centers but also
as architectural showpieces. In this sense, the identity of any given polity was
intimately intertwined with the size and beauty of its sanctuaries. It is thus...

Chapter 10. Empowering Bishops

At the same time that Constantine was redirecting landed and movable property
from cities and temples to Christian churches and building Christian architecture
into the urban infrastructure of cities, he was also working to transfer power...

Part IV. Alternative Responses to Constantine

Chapter 11. Engaging Cities

An emperor’s relationship with his people was always discursive. To be sure, he
generally had the upper hand in any dialogue, for by virtue of his vast administrative,
military, and symbolic power, he could control access to governmental...

Chapter 12. Resisting Cities

Religious violence has come into its own as a field of study. Recent work on the
question in Late Antiquity has made great strides in detaching violence from the
realm of the aberrant and resituating it into the range of the normal. Violence...

Chapter 13. Opposing Christians: Donatists and Caecilianists

Resistance to Constantine’s religious agenda did not arise from pagans alone.
Constantine had only barely announced his conversion publicly when he became
aware of dissent in the Christian community of North Africa. Probably in...

Chapter 14. Complex Cities: Antioch and Alexandria

In numerous instances in Chapters 4 through 7, we have seen how Constantine
was able to exploit interurban rivalries in order to impose aspects of his religious
agenda at the local and regional levels. Orcistus and Nacoleia, Hispellum...

Epilogue

When the magnificent chapel of Saint Sylvester was consecrated beside the church
of the Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome in 1247, Pope Innocent IV was living in
exile in Lyon because of fears he would be set upon by Frederick II, the Holy...

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the simple Search box at the top of the page or the Advanced Search linked from the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the Advanced Search page or on your search results page. Click the Browse box to see a selection of books and journals by: Research Area, Titles A-Z, Publisher, Books only, or Journals only.